TORONTO – June 29, 2016 – As our country gets ready to celebrate its 149th birthday, a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of Historica Canada asked, how are Canadians spending the rest of the summer? And the answer overwhelming was, vacationing at home.

With the Rocky Mountains, three oceans, countless lakes and rivers, and diverse cities, most Canadians (68%) agree – this country has something for everyone, so why go anywhere else. Eight in ten (81%) plan to vacation in Canada this summer, with Ontario being the top destination.

In the winter it’s a bit of a different story. A third of Canadians (31%) say if currency exchange wasn’t a factor, they’d spend summers at home and winters in the United States. A quarter of Canadians (26%) would rather vacation in the U.S. regardless of the season, while nearly half (43%) say year-round, Canada is the place to be.

That may be because four in ten Canadians (39%) travel to the U.S. less often than they used to, specifically because of safety concerns.

“Canada is increasingly composed of people who come from elsewhere, and those who have visited places far beyond our borders,” said Anthony Wilson-Smith, President and CEO of Historica Canada. “But whatever the case, when it comes to summer vacations, for many Canadians there’s no place like our home country.”

The online survey of more than 1,000 respondents also found the Canadian destination of choice is British Columbia. A quarter of Canadians (25%) say that B.C. is where they would spend a dream Canadian vacation, while two in ten (22%) would road trip across the country.

Other findings include:

Three quarters of all Canadians (76%) have lived in or visited Ontario, while only 1% of Canadians have lived in or visited Nunavut.

Four in ten Canadians (40%) say it’s cheaper to travel outside of Canada that to stay within our borders

When asked if currency exchange wasn’t a factor would they rather vacation at home or in the U.S., a quarter of Quebecers (25%) said they wouldn’t even leave their home province

The average Canadian has visited 5 other countries, while 15% of Canadians say they’ve never left this country.

Historica Canada is the country’s largest organization dedicated to enhancing awareness of Canadian history and citizenship.

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted between June 17 and 22, 2016, on behalf of Historica Canada. For this survey, a sample of 1,008 Canadians from Ipsos' online panel was interviewed online. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within +/ - 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.